


How Water Loves

by Erradianwhocantread



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Rule 63, casual nudity, finrod provides some yeats level opportunites for epic faerie tale pr0n, past finrod/beor, what poet could resist that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-09 23:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12286545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erradianwhocantread/pseuds/Erradianwhocantread
Summary: Barahir goes to Finrod after her brother's death.





	How Water Loves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fidelishaereticus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fidelishaereticus/gifts).



> 1\. Rule 63 Barahir and Finrod. If you do not like rule 63, please go read something you will enjoy instead.  
> 2\. This is sometime before the fall of Tol Sirion.

There were stories that told of the dazzling, inhuman loveliness that could be found in the hidden Faerie kingdom, of how Beor had lain on gossamer sheets beneath the roof of a cave that glittered with gemstones, how the Elvenking, resplendent with her shining eyes and shining hair and the storied Nauglamir at her throat, had filled her with gold. 

Dazzlement had never much impressed Barahir.

For her, Felagund’s appeal had nothing to do with the wanton ways she (and, truly, most of her people) made use of treasures beyond the imaginings of the Edain. She had only ever been Finrod that drew her to Nargothrond or to Tol Sirion. The rest was mere trappings.

And it was Finrod that had drawn her here now. 

Barahir sat submerged up to her shoulders in one of the steaming baths in the lower caves in Nargothrond, darkness radiating from her. Her brother had been killed. Her brother was dead and she wanted the comfort her liege could offer, and she was ashamed, so ashamed, ashamed that it was not she who had died, ashamed that though she had been at his side, she could not prevent it, ashamed that in the days following his funeral, all her thoughts were taken up with longing for this, ashamed that she was enjoying herself in such luxury while her people…

She could hear/feel Finrod approaching. The lord of Nargothrond said not a word as she entered the bath that was deserted but for this out-of-place mortal, disrobed, and sat down on the edge of the bath behind Barahir. A hand brushed slowly over her hair a few times, and then the long fingers slipped under her hair and went to work on her scalp. Finrod’s fingers were deft, stronger than their slimness suggested, callused from plucking at harpstrings and bowstrings, and they knew their work well. They pressed firmly into her scalp, kneading out the tension in her head. There was such unfathomable tenderness in Finrod’s hands. The songs and stories never told of that. Finrod sang softly as she worked on Barahir’s head, a song of peace and of healing in a language Barahir did not know.

Barahir let herself lean back into Finrod’s parted legs as the muscles in her neck and shoulders followed the lead of those in her head. One of Finrod’s hands left its work and cupped water to let fall in her hair. It might have lasted an age, the right hand relentlessly undoing the crust of hardness that had formed over her as the left brought the warm water of the bath spilling over her hair and then combed through it, slowly, patiently working out the tangles that had built up in the weeks since Bregolas’ death. The pleasant heat of the water and Finrod’s art steadily unwound every coiled muscle and with them, every tightly coiled bit of control. Barahir’s head had slumped until it was resting on Finrod’s thigh. But this must not go too far.

The song faltered. “What is it?” Finrod asked when she tensed up again and squirmed against her. “Is this not to your liking?”

“No, my lord,” said Barahir without turning around. The fingers against her scalp had stilled. She could not honestly say she wished them to retreat. “Only I fear if you continue I shall weep.”

Finrod’s left hand stroked over her hair slowly, just too tender to be reverent. A kiss was placed on the crown of her head. “Then weep, if it will be well for you to do so. You know we do not share your people’s compunctions about shedding tears in front of others, and even so, there is no one else here.”

Another kiss. Barahir relaxed back against Finrod’s legs. The song resumed, and the merciless fingers pressed at her once again, slowly taking her apart, piece by piece, inside and out, and when the lump rose in her throat she did not fight it. To let her people see their leader’s grief and weakness, to let even her husband see it, would have been a betrayal of the trust they placed in her. Yet here, in this glittering fae realm, her head in the lap of the Elvenking, her liege and her love, it was not weakness. Finrod let her tears fall against her thigh until they were spent, let her own body receive the tears Barahir could not imagine showing amongst her own people, amongst her own family, had not even been able to allow herself to feel…The bards were fools to speak of the gems and fine silks as if they were the measure of the magic of the secret realm, to say nothing in their songs of its deep powers of transformation.  

Her hair and her spirit clean and untangled, her tears ended and her face washed, Barahir wanted nothing more than to drift into sleep against her lord’s leg, the sound of her singing in her ear. But Finrod was too wise to allow such folly. She rose and pulled Barahir after her. She’d brought plain linen robes for each of them, Barahir noticed, in deference to her discomfort with the Eldar’s strange custom of wandering about unclothed. (They were marriage robes, she now knew. And it was that sort of detail, the way she tried to disguise her own hopes in layers of courtesy, the way a kindness, a sensitivity to her friend’s preferences, could be peeled back to reveal Finrod’s own secrets… how, next to that, could a mere necklace impress?) Barahir allowed Finrod to slip the robe onto her, tie it shut, and then, ah yes. The one bit of dazzlement she would permit in these moments. Finrod pressed a scented oil behind each of Barahir’s ears, and then each of her own. 

Barahir allowed Finrod to lead her to the chamber she always used when here (a smallish one, no glittering ceiling), steering her with an arm about her waist. She roused herself just enough to make sure Finrod had done nothing ridiculous like leave rose petals on her bed and shed her robe before she collapsed on a mattress so much softer and fresher than anything even her own family had. Finrod curled behind her, her skin cool against Barahir’s back and legs. Yet more omissions, that the bodies of the Eldar were cooler to the touch than those of the Atani, and that Finrod found the warmth that Barahir could offer her more delightful than all the joys of the earth. Finrod’s talented hand once more in her hair, a song once more in her ear, Barahir sank into contented sleep. 


End file.
